Shut Out of the World Premiere

I am one of 200 volunteer actors and extras who appeared in the now famous Springfield Vermont Simpsons video.

On the day of the movie premiere, I spoke separately with our two leading ladies outside the theater.  Both brought up how unfair it was that we as a group were not invited to any of the four premiere screenings scheduled for that day and evening.

As I walked among the huge crowd. I noticed Kay Ward (the lady who played the Selectboard Chairman).  She looked kind of forlorn as she stood against the brick wall at the far left end of the theater, as if she wanted to be separated from the joyous crowd.  I went over to say hi and see if she was okay.  Just not pleased with the fact we were not given free tickets to the world premiere.  She made this point: "They wouldn't have won without us."   Most of our fellow townspeople who were given or won free tickets didn't care to answer the casting call June 9th.

A while later, I spotted Sandy MaGillivray in the crowd, who delivered the most memorable line in the library scene,  and went over to greet her.  She didn't seem very happy either, and right away started bringing up  the same points to me before I could mention what Kay just said to me.

When I had arrived in the square an hour earlier, I had only been to excited and happy about our town beating out 13 larger Springfields to think much about not being granted a ticket to the premiere for my little acting effort.  But after my contact with the two leading ladies of the video, I began to feel like them and realize how terribly unfair the decision was to shut us out of the movie's big world premiere.

I then walked over to the local coordinator for the big event, the head of of our Chamber of Commerce.  She was at a table set up there in the bank parking lot.   I asked her why those who had volunteered to be in the video weren't automatically offered free tickets. She said they thought about it but there were just too many of us. That's hard to understand since they had over 600 tickets to give away after the first showing which was reserved for about 200 VIPs.

I then asked why not at least invite to represent the 200 locals in the the video, the few the public would recognize from their featured speaking roles in the video.  (I wanted to at least get Kay and Sandy in.)  But "No," she said, "that wouldn't be fair to the others."  She was obviously very busy at that moment so I didn't try to press her further.

A number of local business and community leaders did get invited to be included in that first world premiere showing of The Simpsons Movie.  Probably mostly all paying members of the Chamber.  I suppose those in charge of tickets didn't think it would be quite fair to make the more "elite" in town compete with thousands of plain ordinary folks in the random drawings going on every few minutes for free tickets. Less than 10 percent of them would have gotten seats that way. Not only were they awarded free tickets, some were even given extra tickets to quietly pass on to close friends, associates, and family members.  One town official was heard joking about being granted privilege to attend the first showing and he never even watched an episode of The Simpsons on TV before! Meanwhile, avid fans coming from great distances could only hope their name would drawn at some point so they wouldn't have to go way back home without seeing the movie.

Quite a few out-of-towners who never did any volunteer work for our community were also given the honor of free seats at the big premiere. Most of us in the winning video who gave up as many as four hours of our time outside on a hot day to complete the video would have to wait and pay to see the film when regular nationwide showing began the following weekend. That's just not right.

Why didn't anyone who spoke in the public ceremony on stage take a moment to acknowledge the volunteers in the winning video and thank us for our contribution? Imagine the response from the crowd if someone had asked for a show of hands from anyone present who was in the video.   Instead they rolled out the giant inflated donut with emcee Tim Kavanagh prompting the crowd to applaud and cheer just that pink inner tube.

I suppose after making the choice to exclude us from the movie, it would be better for them if they made no notice of us that day. Too many members of the press there, from all over the world. If we were singled out, they'd want to go up to some of us and ask questions.   So any talk of the acting in the video itself was mostly focused on the two main stars, both outside professionals from northern Vermont. Keep us off the yellow carpet and swept under the rug!

I did try informing members of the press there about this hidden injustice but no one seemed interested.  I guess they all had decided earlier this was to be their positive feel-good news story of the weekend, the little Springfield that beat out all the larger Springfields.

The chairman of the Governor's Travel and Recreation Council says the heavy media attention Springfield has received and will continue to receive could bring in $3 million dollars in "tourism residuals" over the long term. Wasn't our part in all this worth 200 seats at the premiere, especially with 20th Century Fox making available all 600 plus tickets for free?

A special thanks to all the thousands of you out there in cyberspace who viewed and voted for our video. It seems we were better appreciated on the internet so I have created a website of our own. Please visit http://spfldvt.awardspace.us/simpsons .